night.

SELF-CARE, Psychology

A piece on learning emotional defusion.

I. this is what a memory looks like.

don't you just want a whole gallery of them? with purples, sunsets, greens, squares, smiles and orange hues, forests, the ocean whites, watermelon, loved ones, rocks, and so much infinitely, wholly more?

then you have to be able to move on. you can't be hung on or get caught by one thought past its due time. make sure you are not defined by your emotions. although your threshold to feel can be a major part of your identity, emotions are simply visitors: coming through you, and you the vehicle for them to do so. so let them pass through, coming and going like the cars on the city road--all different shapes and sizes and colors and speeds, all pushing glorious momentum into the night atmosphere. if you become too fused to your emotions, the less able you are to have control over your life.

still feel everything fully and with your whole heart, but remember to create a careful separation from your emotions and you in a way that you can yet experience the spacious, colorful range of feeling you are more than deserving of, in a healthy way. that way you can construct your gallery of these memories.

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II. this is how you feel it-- in your bones, your muscles, the tips of your toes, glowing inside your rib cage.

these are the important things.

not whether your thighs have gotten wider,

whether those people think you're weak.

because

everything is blur.

a blur,

that's how meaningless,

those momentary feelings of

urgency of trivial matters are

how fleeting life is

like the night, when

you sometimes think about how

your day just went by in a whiz, and

then later, the week,

and the month, and then

a year.

© 2023 Rachel Jeong. All rights reserved.